The Diary of a Shirtwaist Striker

I have found this diary to be pretty monotonous. The author Theresa Serber Malakiel dedicates this text to the Shirtwaist workers and the strikers that have suffered discrimination and poor working and living conditions due to factory labor. The narrator of the storry is a young women arround the age of twenty. Actually for her time that age is pretty old for a women who works in a factory because they usually work from the age of thirteenish and are expected to marry off by their twenties. The narrator again is a Christian worker who admires the majority of jewish workers for there willingness to rebel. In the beginning of the novel she is afraid to work out on the streets. She has a close relationship with Jim who she plans to marry. However, as she gets more involved with the strike, her Jim fears her rebellious nature and ask her to stop or he will not marry her. She is taken back by his anger and ignorance towards their cause. She hates the fact that he has the old way of thinking of a submissive women. She finds him quite contradictory because he believes in the revolution of workers rights just not in the case for women. I think it is interesting how once someone is in a mindset it is near impossible to get them out of it and change their ways of thinking. I feel that as the narrator gets more into the striking business, she will sacrifice her family and her relationship with Jim. She admires in the beginning how the jewish women will go hungry for their rights and i feel that her sacrifice will be such.